Emperor Shah Alam II (r. 1760-1806) on the Peacock Throne

Enlarge My gallery Comment Tag Share Download Image*
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/collections.lacma.org-images/remote_images/ma-151841-O3.jpg?OZH.p5Txu4VheQ_76bu5701ZlVu3p6K4
View comments
No comments have been posted yet.
Add a comment
Please log in to add comments.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
Download powerpoint quality jpeg Download publication quality tiff
Current tags
This item has not been tagged yet.
Please log in to add tags.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

Emperor Shah Alam II (r. 1760-1806) on the Peacock Throne

India, Delhi, Mughal Empire, 1801
Drawings; watercolors
Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper
13 3/4 x 9 1/8 in. (34.9 x 23.2 cm)
Indian Art Special Purpose Fund (M.77.78)
South and Southeast Asian Art
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Emperor Shah Alam II (r. 1760-1806) was born in 1728. His birth name was Ali Gauhar (or Ali Gohar). He was the Crown Prince of his father, Emperor Alamgir II (r....
Emperor Shah Alam II (r. 1760-1806) was born in 1728. His birth name was Ali Gauhar (or Ali Gohar). He was the Crown Prince of his father, Emperor Alamgir II (r. 1754-1759), who was assassinated in 1759 by Imad ul-Mulk (d. 1800), the grand vizier of the Mughal Empire who was allied with the Maratha Empire. After being tortured and fearing for his life, Ali Gauhar fled Delhi with the help of the Lucknow Nawab Shuja al-Daula (r. 1754–75). In 1760 the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani (r. 1747–1772) sacked Delhi, deposed Imad ul-Mulk’s puppet Emperor Shah Jahan III (r. 1759-1760), and installed Shah Alam II as the emperor. Shah Alam II inherited a weakened Mughal Empire plagued by military incursions, including by the Afghan Rohilla chief Ghulam Qadir (d. 1789), who sacked Delhi and blinded Shah Alam II in 1788. In 1803 the British occupied Delhi during the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803-1805), and Shah Alam II continued to rule under British protection. The blind Shah Alam II is seated on a replacement Peacock Throne, the original of which was plundered by the Iranian King Nadir Shah (r. 1736-1747) during his sack of Delhi in 1739. He is granting an audience, perhaps to a minister. A Persian inscription on the reverse lists the emperor’s epithets, the signature of the artist, Khairullah Musawir (India, active 1800-1815), and the date AH 1215 (1800-1801 CE). (Translation by Z. A. Desai.) Another version of this portrait is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (IS.114-1986).
More...